Blue Degrowth
By
Tariq Al-Olaimy, Louise Carver, Irmak Ertör, Borja Nogué Algueró, Francesca Savoldi & Fernando “Nani” Ruiz Iglesias
The fourth Deep Dive we are offering is “Blue Degrowth”, taught by Tariq Al-Olaimy, Louise Carver, Irmak Ertör, Borja Nogué Algueró, Francesca Savoldi & Fernando “Nani” Ruiz Iglesias.
Savoldi & Fernando “Nani” Ruiz Iglesias, with classes of 2.5 hours each Monday starting on May 13th till June 11th, from 5pm to 7.30pm CEST.
This course is organized in collaboration with the Blue Degrowth Network. You can find more information about this network here. If you would like to join the network, please send an email to bluedegrowthnetwork@riseup.net. More info here https://degrowth.org/projects/blue-degrowth-network/
Course format
The Deep Dive at a glance
The ocean is both the living matrix of the planet and a strategic frontier of contemporary capitalism. It regulates climate, stores heat and carbon, sustains immense biodiversity, feeds communities, and carries the bulk of global trade. Yet it is increasingly governed through blue economy and blue growth agendas that promise win-win solutions while often deepening extraction, enclosure, financialisation, and inequality.
A degrowth conversation that stops at the shore leaves one of the central terrains of ecological crisis and social reproduction unchallenged.
This course offers an intensive introduction to blue degrowth as both critique and proposal. It is designed as a two-way bridge: an introduction to degrowth for marine professionals, researchers, and activists, and an introduction to the Ocean for degrowthers who want to better understand marine ecologies, governance, livelihoods, and conflicts. Bringing marine ecological thinking into conversation with political ecology, critical ocean studies, environmental justice, and post-growth debates, it moves across ocean governance, blue carbon, shipping and ports, conservation, community economies, and the arts.
Requirements
No prior expertise in degrowth, ocean policy, maritime economics, or marine science is required. The course is designed for participants coming from marine and coastal fields who want an introduction to degrowth, and for participants coming from degrowth who want to deepen their understanding of the Ocean. An interest in marine and coastal questions, political ecology, environmental justice, or ocean sustainability is recommended.
For an overall introduction to degrowth, check our course “Introduction to degrowth” on our webpage.
Target
The course is aimed at:
- PhD and Master students – The course offers an interdisciplinary map of key debates across marine sciences, political ecology, ocean governance, and public policy, and helps participants identify research questions, case studies, and literatures for further work.
- Marine professionals and practitioners – The course provides a structured introduction to degrowth and its relevance for fisheries, climate, shipping, conservation, coastal planning, and ocean sustainability.
- Activists and organizers – The course offers conceptual tools and case studies for understanding blue growth, enclosure, financialisation, logistics, justice struggles, and possible alternatives.
- Researchers working in degrowth – The course offers an introduction to the Ocean as a socioecological system, governance arena, livelihood base, and site of political conflict.
- Policy-makers and public servants – The course provides a framework for thinking beyond blue growth toward sufficiency, justice, sovereignty, commons governance, and ecological limits in marine and coastal policy.
Class format and learning tools
The course is taught with a variety of teaching methods that include frontal lectures and peer-to-peer learning moments such as plenary debates, facilitated discussions, group work in break-out rooms, and multi-media educational material.
Participants should be ready to come prepared to class with doing the necessary reading, to foster active and informed participation and ensure a fertile learning environment for everyone.
Timeline
Classes will be 2.5 hours each Monday starting on May 13th till June 11th, from 5pm to 7.30pm (CET).
May 13th – Introduction to Blue Degrowth – Irmak Ertör and Borja Nogué Algueró
May 20th – International Ocean Governance & the Global Blue Economy – Tariq Al-Olaimy
May 27th – Blue Carbon or Blue Capture? – Fernando “Nani” Ruiz Iglesias
June 3rd – Conflicts at the Maritime Backbone of the Global Economy: Shipping, Ports & Logistics – Francesca Savoldi
June 10th – Are other Blue Economies possible? Convivial Conservation, Community Economies and the Arts – Louise Carver
About the teachers
Tariq Al-Olaimy is co-founder of an ecosystem of social and planetary initiatives, including 3BL Associates, Diversity & Nature on Board, Recipes for Wellbeing, Post-Growth.Earth and FutureFaith. Tariq is among the first 100 certified Biomimicry Specialists globally, with an academic background spanning investment and financial risk management, degrowth and post-growth economics, exponential innovation, and spiritual ecology. From the island of Bahrain, Tariq has held advisory, board, and co-chair roles with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, World Economic Forum Foundations, Global Shapers Community, UNESCO, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, UN Climate Change High-Level Champions, Carboun, and EAT.
Grounded in the Systemic Sacred, Tariq is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Faith in Action and advises organisations, including the G20 Global Land Initiative, Greenpeace MENA, and Oceans5, on engaging faith communities in climate action and ecosystem restoration.
Louise Carver is a political ecologist and geographer whose transdisciplinary work examines questions of value and valuation in green and blue economies, especially regarding biodiversity. She works across research, policy, arts and cultural settings, leading the Convivial Blue Commons Living Lab with contemporary art-research organisation TBA21—Academy in Jamaica, and co-directs the Convivial Conservation Centre at Wageningen University (NL) as a global network of scholar practitioners reimagining the political economy of conservation.
Irmak Ertör is a political ecologist and an associate professor at the Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Bogazici University, Istanbul, since 2019. Before her current position, she was working at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) as a post-doctoral researcher in the ERC-funded ENVJUSTICE project, focusing on global fisheries conflicts and environmental justice. She holds a BS in Economics and an MA in Modern Turkish History from Bogazici University, Turkey. She has been a Marie Curie (ITN) early-stage researcher of the ENTITLE project (European Network of Political Ecology) and completed her PhD on the “Political Ecology of Marine Finfish Aquaculture in Europe” in ICTA, UAB.
Currently, she teaches political ecology and alternative economies as well as continues to do research on socio-environmental conflicts and social movements of fisher communities, community-supported fisheries, food systems and food sovereignty, blue economy/degrowth, and environmental/blue justice. She has research published in journals like the Journal of Peasant Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change, Marine Policy, and Global Environmental Change, among others, and she is an associate editor of the journal New Perspectives on Turkey.
Borja Nogué Algueró is a postdoctoral researcher in the Environmental Sociology group at the University of Gothenburg, where he works within the Swedish Research Council programme A Sea of Plastic on European plastics governance and upstream pollution prevention. His research sits at the intersection of environmental sociology, ecological economics, and political ecology, focusing on why environmentally harmful material throughput persists even when sustainability is the stated policy goal. He completed his PhD at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), where his dissertation Limits to Blue Growth analysed how growth-oriented marine governance becomes normalised while redistributing environmental burdens, combining historical analysis with socio-metabolic indicators across shipping, ports, and fisheries.
He has published in journals such as Sustainability Science, Frontiers in Marine Science, and Environmental Research Letters. Borja is a member of the Blue Degrowth Network and of Research & Degrowth International. He has taught the Blue Degrowth seminar in the Online Masters in Degrowth at ICTA-UAB and has coordinated commissioned policy work with the City Council of his home town of Girona on ecosocial-transition planning.
Francesca Savoldi is a human geographer (PhD) working at the intersection of urban geography and political ecology. Her research explores how global infrastructural expansion reshapes urban geographies and socio-environmental relations, with a particular focus on port cities, as well as how coastal territories are being reconfigured through climate change adaptation and the rapid growth of blue economies. She is also the founder of the online platform Contested Ports. Francesca has taught and carried out research at several research institutes including TU Delft (where she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow), Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Universidade Nova de Lisboa.
Fernando “Nani” Ruiz Iglesias is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). His work focuses on the political economy of environmental expertise, looking critically at how political-economic forces shape the production, application and dissemination of environmental science– and, in turn, how these forces shape scientific fields. His current research specifically explores the political economy of coastal blue carbon. Nani came to the political economy of science through a frustrating career attempting to apply his technical expertise to address social and environmental problems. He holds a master’s degree in marine science from the Université Côte d’Azur and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He has worked as an engineer, analyst, and researcher: developing technologies to repurpose plastic bags in Arusha, Tanzania; conducting the data analysis for San Francisco’s climate action plan; and studying seagrass soil carbon disturbances in the Mediterranean. These experiences led him to move beyond the purely technical and examine how technical and political forces are inextricably linked. Nani is also an active member of Science for the People, where he works toward the political education of scientists, and a contributor to The Luddie, an anti-capitalist tech blog.
Applications and pricing
Applications to the “Deep Dive” Online Course are open from October 13th to November 2nd, 2025. Registrations will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. We encourage you to apply early to secure your spot. After registration closes, all applicants will be notified. Once notified, accepted participants will have one week to confirm their spot by paying the course fee.
Price
250 Euros
The fee of 250 Euros covers all costs for the course. This consist in five classes of 2.5 hours with a maximum capacity of 25 people. Classes allow interaction and exercise between lecturer and peers.
Two scholarships
The scholarships are intended for individuals who face significant financial barriers and would otherwise be unable to attend the course. To apply for a scholarship please explain your situation to us (see application form).
Applications and pricing
Applications to the “Deep Dive” Online Course will open from April 17th to April 27th, 2026. Registrations will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. We encourage you to apply early to secure your spot. After registration closes, all applicants will be notified. Once notified, accepted participants will have one week to confirm their spot by paying the course fee.
Price
250 Euros
The fee of 250 Euros covers all costs for the course. This consist in five classes of 2.5 hours with a maximum capacity of 25 people. Classes allow interaction and exercise between lecturer and peers.
Two scholarships
The scholarships are intended for individuals who face significant financial barriers and would otherwise be unable to attend the course. To apply for a scholarship please explain your situation to us (see application form).